Site of the First Methodist Episcopal Church

Duane's take

The official marker tells it this way, and I'm just the one passin' it along. San Augustine, Texas. January 7, 1838.

The Republic of Texas is barely two years old, still findin' its footing, still figurin' out what it's going to be. And on that cold January day, something is laid into the ground that says, quietly but firmly: we are building something here that is meant to last. A cornerstone.

The cornerstone of the first Methodist Episcopal Church erected in the Republic of Texas. Not a settlement, not a territory, not a state yet. A republic.

And this congregation decided that right here, right now, was the moment. Now, they didn't just set that stone in silence. They did it with the usages of the Masonic order.

There's a ceremony to that, a weight to it, a sense that what you're consecrating the ground to matters and the ritual around it matters just as much. These were people who understood that how you begin a thing sets the tone for everything that follows. Two men stepped forward to speak that day.

The Reverend Littleton Fowler delivered an address. And standing alongside him, General Thomas J. Rusk delivered one as well.

A minister and a general, sharing the same ground, on the same January morning, in the same young republic. The state of Texas erected a marker here in 1936 to make sure nobody forgot it. And that's the thing about a cornerstone.

You lay it once. But the story of what got built on top of it, that keeps on bein' told.

What the marker says

Site of the First METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH Erected in the Republic of Texas. Cornerstone laid, January 7, 1838 with the usages of the Masonic order. The Reverend Littleton Fowler and General Thomas J. Rusk delivered addresses. Erected by the State of Texas 1936